


Christmas is My Favourite Time of Year

by IveGotRedHair



Category: Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Genre: Broadway, Coughing, Fever, Gen, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 09:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12932694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IveGotRedHair/pseuds/IveGotRedHair
Summary: It's Christmas and Frank isn't feeling well and he's got no one to talk to expect maybe one Carl Hanratty.





	Christmas is My Favourite Time of Year

**Author's Note:**

> I recently watched the Catch Me if You Can musical and absolutely loved it! Aaron Tviet is incredible you should go and check it out!

It was Christmas Eve the hours till Christmas Day ticking down to the single digits. Most people were in their homes, wrapping presents, having parties, being with their loved ones but Agent Carl Hanratty wasn’t most people. He had a job to do, a con man to catch and if that meant spending his Christmas alone in the office then so be it. It wasn’t like had a family to go back to anymore. One too many missed birthdays, anniversaries and Christmases and they leave you behind.   
Carl Hanratty was sat at his desk surrounded by fake checks, they’d been trying to get hold of the con artist for months but the kid always seemed to slip away from them. That was the thing that surprised Hanratty the most, he’d met a lot of criminals in his time in FBI but never any like Frank. He was just a kid, not even eighteen years old yet his con had racked up over two million stolen dollars. By the eleven o'clock chime Hanratty had resigned himself to a night with just his whiskey and cigar but then his phone rang. It wasn’t usual for his phone to ring but no so at such a time of night.   
“Hanratty, Merry Christmas,” he answered trying to force out some jollyness.   
“Carl?”   
The voice at the other end was young and raspy. Hanratty didn’t need to be in FBI to know who was on the line.   
“Why are you calling me Frank? It’s Christmas, don’t you have anything better to do?” he asked.   
“I...I…”   
The boy’s voice cracked and there was the muffled sound of coughing, it sounded harsh and there was a certain wheeze to his breathing.   
“Frank, are you ill?”   
“Yeah,” the boy sniffed.   
“Then you should be in bed, not talking to me.”   
Hanratty isn’t sure where the piece of parenting comes from, after all he’d never had children of his own but there is was all the same.   
“Couldn’t sleep,” came the raspy reply.   
“How long have you been ill?” Hanratty asked.   
Frank coughed again, the sound crackled in the phone and Hanratty winced.   
“I don’t know, couple of days maybe,” Frank replied.   
“Have you taken anything?”   
“Don’t know what to take,” Frank said.   
Hanratty is stumped for a moment, how can a person not know what medicine they should take? Then he’s reminded just how young the kid is, he should be getting a day off school and have his mom taking care of him. Instead on his own on the phone with him, the Agent trying to take him in.   
“Is this why you called Frank? You didn’t have anyone else to help.”   
There was a pathetic sniffle and the sound of him clearing his throat.   
“So what if it is?” He croaked.   
Hanratty felt something in his chest, something like sympathy. The kid shouldn’t be alone, not like this. He was probably running a fever and judging by that cough he was feeling pretty awful, he deserved better than to be talking to him but it seemed he was all he had.   
“Doesn’t matter, just tell me how you’re feeling?” Hanratty asked.   
“Bad, my head hurts, my chest aches, I can barely talk and I’m so cold,” Frank said.   
“Sounds like you’ve got the flu, you needs pain meds and cough syrup… Are you even old enough to buy that stuff?” Hanratty asked.   
“No, but when has that ever stopped me?” Frank replied, a little of his cheekiness returning.   
Hanratty didn’t want to condone lawbreaking so he said nothing, the truth was he knew the kid didn’t have another choice.   
“I… I’m sorry about this, I didn’t…” Frank is cut off by a brutal sounding coughing fit and Hanratty finds himself wishing he was there to pat his back.   
“I know kid, it’s okay. I’m here right by the phone if you need me.”   
“Thank you,” Frank replied, Hanratty pretended not to hear the little waver in his voice.   
“You go get your meds okay? You’ll feel better.”   
“Okay, thank you Agent.”   
Frank sniffled and then the line went dead. Hanratty couldn’t help but feel slightly empty, the phone still in his hand. He hadn’t realised how lonely it was in the office until he found himself sad to hear Frank go. He felt for the kid, he did. No one deserved to be alone and sick at Christmas, not so young. Hanratty remembered being Frank’s age, trying to get act grown up but in reality you’re not. No one is at that age, they pretend but they’re not and Frank is no different. He still needs someone to look out for him, to make sure he’s okay and it seems his parents weren’t up to the job, too bothered by their own lives to see when their son was spiraling out of control. Sometimes he wondered who the real criminals were. 

Christmas Day arrived but nothing changed, at some point Carl Hanratty had fallen asleep at his desk, a half drunk glass of whiskey next to him. He hadn’t moved from beside the phone, just in case but so far all had been quiet on the Eastern front. There had been a little pit of worry in Hanratty’s stomach, one that wondered if the kid had made it back okay and hadn’t passed out in the street or been jumped by someone not fazed by the pilots hat. But in the end sleep won out as it usually does. 

The phone rang at three thirty am. Hanratty jerked awake, sending fake checks all over the place in his scramble for the phone.   
“Frank, is that you?”   
“Yeah.”   
His voice was worse, a hoarse whisper he was losing quickly. His throat was probably wrecked from coughing.   
“Are you okay?”   
“I don’t think so,” Frank said, he sounded so young and vulnerable. It wasn’t the Frank that Hanratty had gotten to know, the cocky one that was on top of the world. This was something altogether different and one he wasn’t sure he was prepared for.   
“What’s wrong?” Hanratty asked, kind of scared of the can of worms he was about to open.   
“I miss home,” Frank said and sniffed. Hanratty is pretty sure he’s crying and though he suspects it’s the fever that’s doing it it doesn’t make it any less painful to hear.   
“I’m sorry kid, it’s the time of year it messes with you. But I miss home too,” Hanratty replied.   
“Why aren’t you at home?” Frank asked.   
Hanratty sighed, he thought about telling him about his wife. He’d met Penny when he’d just started in the academy and she was training to become a teacher. If you’d asked a young Carl Hanratty if he’d believed in love at first sight he would have laughed in your face but that was before he saw her, all red hair and green eyes, she was beautiful. It had taken him weeks to get up the courage to ask her on a date and was overjoyed when she agreed. They married less than a year later just at the time he got his job in at FBI. Those first few years were so good, he had someone to come to, someone to love but they’d had no children. There’d been no time, they were so busy and before he knew it he was going days without seeing her, too many late nights at the office. Then without him noticing she was gone, he came home one night and the house was empty, a letter on the kitchen table. She couldn’t do it anymore, the job always came before her and she couldn’t take it. She still loved him but it was obvious he no longer loved her.   
That had been years ago and he’d never tried to find anyone else, no one would be able to compare. But he didn’t say any of that, he didn’t want to make things worse. It was Christmas after all.   
“Because I’ve got a job to do,” Hanratty replied.   
“Even at Christmas?” Frank said, he sounded surprised. Like it was him Hanratty that was the one to feel sorry for in all this not the kid all alone.   
“Yes, even at Christmas but it’s not so bad. It beats eating brussel sprouts that’s for sure.”   
Frank sniffed and coughed weakly, it sounded like he was still crying and Hanratty wished there was something he could do. He thought about trying to get in contact with Frank’s parents, he probably had their information somewhere but that would break all the rules. He couldn’t help Frank, not really hell he shouldn’t even be talking to him. He still had a job to do and that job was to bring Frank in for his crimes, not help him escape again. No, they’d have to make do with what they had.   
“My mom makes the best Christmas dinner, potatoes piled so high you can barely see across the table. Homemade cranberry sauce, rich onion stuffing and then there’s the turkey…”   
Frank’s voice cracked and he coughed, they sounded like they were ripping at his throat as they dragged the gunk from his lungs. He really was sick and though neither of them wanted to alone Hanratty knew the best place for the kid was bed.   
“Stop it kid, you’re making me hungry. My mom always did brussel sprouts and they smelled horrible, they stunk up the place and every year we were forced to eat them.”  
“Sounds awful,” Frank said.   
“It wasn’t that bad, though even now I can’t smell cabbages without getting flashbacks.”   
Frank chuckled before snapping away from the phone in three violent sneezes, each sounding harsher than the last.   
“You okay?” Hanratty asked, trying to hide the concern from his voice. He didn’t want to be concerned about the boy, there was a line he’d tried not to cross but he just sounded so miserable.   
“That hurt,” Frank croaked.   
“Frank, do you think it’s time you went to bed? You need rest.”   
Frank sniffed and struggled to clear his throat, his next words were nothing short of a whisper.   
“Don’t want to leave you alone.”  
Hanratty’s heart clenched, it wasn’t the reply he was expecting. He had been fighting so hard not to care too much for the kid, to keep it somewhat professional he hadn’t even thought that maybe, in that moment he was closest thing Frank had to family, and that he cared.   
“I’m okay, I’ve been doing this a long time. You on the other hand sound like you’re about to drop dead, so go to bed. I won’t get the satisfaction if I can’t bring you in alive.”   
Frank laughed a little, a cough escaping at the end.  
“Carl?”   
“Yes Frank?”   
“Merry Christmas.”   
“Merry Christmas kid, see you in the New Year.”   
“I hope not.”   
Hanratty laughed and thought about wishing him well but the dial tone was in his ear. Frank had gone, hopefully to bed where he’d sleep off whatever bug he’d picked up and would be back to his crimes in no time. Out the window the sun had started to rise, Christmas had truly arrived but still Hanratty didn’t leave his desk. Just in case the phone rang, not that he cared or anything.


End file.
